Kenneth Starr's real conflict of interest

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and chief executive officer of WND. He is the author or co-author of 13 books that have sold more than 5 million copies, including his latest, "The Restitution of All Things: Israel, Christians, and the End of the Age." Before launching WND as the first independent online news outlet in 1997, he served as editor in chief of major market dailies including the legendary Sacramento Union.

The vast left-wing conspiracy to protect President Clinton has a new defense strategy. Now that it has effectively neutralized congressional opposition and press criticism, the Clinton attack machine has focused most of its wrath on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr by suggesting he has a conflict of interest.

For once I would like to agree with the defend-Clinton-at-any-cost crowd. Starr does have a conflict of interest. But it’s not illusory ties to conservative millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Rather Starr’s conflict is that he has strong links with the same foreign powers suspected of corrupting this administration.

There is not a doubt in my mind, given the way Starr has botched his investigation of Clinton every step of the way, that the independent counsel is serving interests other than justice.

While Starr is being denounced by Clinton administration officials as a “right-wing extremist,” he is, in fact, part of the same insider political establishment that backs Bill Clinton’s selling of this country down the Yangtse River.

As Strategic Investment reported last year, one of Starr’s largest law clients is the China International Trust and Investment Corp., or CITIC, a ministry-level corporation owned by the Chinese government and reporting directly to the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. The chairman of CITIC is Wang Jun, who also heads Poly Group Corp., the major arms trading section of the People’s Liberation Army. Poly Group was the company caught trying smuggle 2,000 automatic weapons into the United States aboard a China Overseas Shipping Co., or COSCO, vessel last year.

This is a conflict far more glaring in its appearance than Starr’s connections with American tobacco companies and General Motors. For it is Clinton’s relationship with China that is more disturbing and more threatening to the vital national security interests of this country than his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

It’s an open secret now that millions of dollars flowed illegally into the Clinton-Gore campaign and into the coffers of the Democratic National Committee from Chinese and other mysterious Asian sources during the 1996 election campaign. Two years later, we can now ask what those dollars may have purchased. The answer is to that question is apparently anything China wanted.

For instance, was anyone prosecuted for the attempt to import those automatic weapons into the United States so they could be sold to L.A. street gangs? No. Why not? This administration is hell-bent on denying law-abiding Americans with even semi-automatic weapons. You would think Clinton and company would be outraged that a foreign company would try to smuggle these actual “assault weapons” into the states. Why wasn’t there a peep of protest from the White House? Why didn’t the federal government make an example of the Poly Group and their collaborators in COSCO?

More recently, of course, The New York Times exposed the way the Loral Corp. was cleared personally by the president of any wrongdoing in providing the Chinese with technology that will sharpen the aim of their nuclear missiles targeted on the United States of America. Loral’s boss was the largest individual contributor to the DNC in 1996.

Remember, this was the administration which came to power criticizing President Bush’s all-too-cozy relationship with China. Yet, it quickly adopted Bush’s policy of granting “Most Favored Nation” status to the brutes in Beijing. Then there was the decision by the Department of Commerce to reclassify formerly restricted military technology for supercomputers, radiation-resistant computer chips, satellite geo-positioners, submarine and stealth technology, high-tech missile engine tools and more. U.S. companies have been selling all of these items to the Chinese ever since.

The China scandal, of course, is one that threatens to cut in bipartisan fashion. Senior politicians from both major political parties serve as unregistered lobbyists for the Chinese government. They include Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger, Mickey Cantor and Robert Strauss. In addition, some of the nation’s largest banks, multinational corporations and financial institutions are promoting even cozier ties with Beijing as a recipe for economic growth over the next decade — human rights, freedom and national security be damned.

So when the left-wing conspiracy theorists ask you why a “right-wing Republican” like Kenneth Starr would hesitate to go for the jugular in his investigation of the president, now you have some answers.